Brick Lane has everything: richly complex characters, a gripping story and an exploration of a community that is so quintessentially British that it has given us our national dish, but of which most of us are entirely ignorant. It's also a meditation on fate and free will. And it's funny. And painful. 14/1

Yellow DogMartin Amis Jonathan Cape £16.99

Martin Amis's tenth novel, which will not be published until September, is already provoking heated arguments: is he on top form or off the boil? The dirty London terrain is familiar, as are characters with names like Clint Smoker and Royce Traynor, but the satire (of royalty and the media) is more biting and the mood is darker than ever. 8/1

Oryx and CrakeMargaret Atwood Bloomsbury £16.99

Margaret Atwood has always been an uneven writer and, in this instance, it soon starts to feel as though all the details - clever neologisms, freakish computer games and weird hybrids - are a substitute for something deeper. In the end, Oryx and Crake is a parable, an imaginative text for the anti-globalisation movement that does not quite work as a novel. 10/1

Elizabeth CostelloJ.M. Coetzee Secker & Warburg £14.99

Coetzee is favourite to win for the third time with his new novel, which comes out next month. It tells the story of a great novelist whose life has been reduced to an international circuit of punditry and guest appearances. Elizabeth Costello's plight, imprisoned by her own success, has led some commentators to read the novel as veiled autobiography. 6/1

Schopenhauer's TelescopeGerard Donovan Scribner £15.99

Schopenhauer's Telescope is set over the course of a single, snow-filled November day, in a part of the world where dusk falls at three o'clock and an era that feels disturbingly like our own. Realised with photographic intensity and unremittingly paced, this is a devastatingly good novel. 25/1

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-timeMark Haddon Jonathan Cape £10.99

Haddon pulls off something extraordinary: in his narrator's literal view of the world, he finds a kind of beauty. He respects Christopher's strange take on life, his mathemat virtuosity and his devotion to his rat. 20/1

Notes on a ScandalZoe Heller Penguin £14.99

A sympathetic portrayal of the isola tion at the heart of human consciousness, Heller's Notes on a Scandal finds a genuinely elegant balance between dark comedy and tragedy, and concludes on a satisfyingly sinister note. 14/1

Something Might HappenJulie Myerson Jonathan Cape £12.99

This is a tour de force , the best novel that Julie Myerson has written, which really is saying something. Something Might Happen seems to exist out of time. It lifted me into a nightmare so convincing that I had to put everything on hold to finish it. That feeling of being out of time is, I realise, the atmosphere in which extreme emotions occur - grief, love, fear. After it was over, I felt as though the story had passed like a sharp, single intake of breath. 16/1

Judge SavageTim Parks Secker & Warburg £16.99

Judge Savage is a work of tremendous learning and subtlety but it is by no means an easy read. Tim Park's book is unremittingly serious, forensic, edgy, awkward and, ultimately, depressing. It diagnoses - but doesn't prescribe a cure for - the angst of the urban postmodern experience: how on earth to set the moral co-ordinates by which to plot one's life. 14/1

Vernon God LittleD.B.C. Pierre Faber £12.99

Most things about this debut are remarkable and some are just inimitable. Pierre's protagonist, 15-year-old misfit Vernon Gregory Little, narrates his story in phrases that whip off the page like gunshot - 'See what happens now I'm in trouble. See the awesome power of trouble. Trouble fucken rocks.' 25/1

Waxwings Jonathan Raban Picador £15.99

This is a story of love and loss, a sad, clear-eyed account of the end of a marriage, and an acknowledgement of the news that must hit all émigrés sooner or later: they may be in a new world, but they still live in the same head. 16/1

The Light of DayGraham Swift Hamish Hamilton £16.99

The Light of Day offers a masterclass in narrative. Everything is kept short but every element unites. Information is delivered in drips, not surges, and a number of interlocking stories are bound together, strand by strand. 10/1